Bruce Springsteen needed that one transcendent hit to take him to another level of rock superstardom. And considering it was 1984, a year when MTV ruled the musical roost, he decided to go all-in and create his first true video for the song “Dancing in the Dark.”
Videos by American Songwriter
Although it took some wrong turns to get there, the clip that Springsteen eventually delivered captured the fun and spirit of his live performances, while also making him seem even more like an everyman due to his somewhat clunky dancing. Let’s look back at how “Dancing in the Dark” turned the Boss into a video star.
Playing the Video Game
Among rock and roll stars of his era, Bruce Springsteen was one of the last holdouts when it came to making videos. The closest he came was a clip for the song “Atlantic City” in 1982. But he didn’t appear in that video, which simply featured shots of the surrounding areas of the city played over the music.
His 1984 album Born in the U.S.A. album was created with intent and purpose to be a crossover success, the first time that Springsteen had truly made a play for pop audiences. “Dancing in the Dark” was written and produced in a way that made it quite palatable for radio, with its booming chorus and its synthesizer-heavy, danceable recording.
It made all the sense in the world for him to make a video for this clip, especially since MTV was clamoring to get in the Springsteen game. Perhaps because he was a neophyte in that arena, he struggled at first with how to go about it, nearly making a big mistake in the process.
Shadow “Dancing”
The internet finds out everything eventually, so it was probably isn’t all that surprising that in 2011, footage of Springsteen’s first attempt at a “Dancing in the Dark” video surfaced. This clip featured nothing more than the Boss dancing and lip-syncing the song against a dark backdrop (pretty on the nose).
While we can assume there might have been more editing done before this clip actually made it to the airwaves had Springsteen followed it through, the existing video isn’t pretty. Who knows if it would have done damage to his attempted ascent. Springsteen clearly sensed that it was going awry, walked out of the shooting, and regrouped.
He then hired Brian De Palma, a respected film director of classics like Scarface and Carrie, to helm a new clip. It was also decided that Springsteen should be filmed where he was most comfortable: on stage. The video for “Dancing in the Dark” would take place at a Springsteen show, with a nod to a common tradition at those shows: a fan dancing with Bruce during one of the songs.
Doing the Springsteen Shuffle
The “Dancing in the Dark” video was partly filmed at an actual Springsteen show on the Born in the U.S.A. tour, and also utilized footage shot separately that was made to look like an actual concert. Courteney Cox, who was not yet the big star she would become on Friends, won the role of the lucky fan who would join the Boss on stage.
Springsteen prances about the stage in the video, bopping somewhat awkwardly to the beat, before eventually inviting Cox to dance with him. While there was nothing groundbreaking about the clip, it captured the artist’s connection with his fans. And because of how unschooled he was as a dancer, he came off as relatable and charming.
“Dancing in the Dark” very nearly nabbed Springsteen his first ever No. 1 on the pop charts, and the video certainly had something to do with that. His subsequent clips would get a bit more involved, even requiring him to do some acting. But none of the follow-ups caused quite as much of a stir as that first one, when the Boss played the MTV game, and as he did with just every other challenge in his career, triumphed.
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Photo by Paul Natkin/WireImage
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